Meditations

Meditations is unique among ancient philosophical texts that have survived in that it is private writing—a journal to benefit the composer, with no evident larger audience in mind. The Koine Greek that Marcus composed in was a standardized form of ancient Greek that developed in the third century BC—as Alexander the Great’s conquests and his successor empires eventually led to Greek culture being exported—and remained in use through late antiquity. Greek was the acknowledged language of philosophy and taught among the aristocratic Roman classes. Writing in Greek may also represent for Marcus an opportunity to retreat from his day-to-day reality via a retreat into language (from Latin to Greek). The Meditations’ characteristics resonate with advice given by Epictetus to make a daily practice of composing and rehearsing virtuous responses to circumstances one is likely to encounter so that one is not caught off-guard, leaving one vulnerable to impulse. Across the Meditations, Marcus enacts exercises that can bring him into harmony with his beliefs and purpose.

Book 1 is notable for its thematic and compositional unity compared to other books in the Meditations that more closely resemble haphazard diary entries. Scholars are divided as to how to interpret this. On the one hand, the perceived unity of Book 1 may suggest that Marcus intended an audience besides himself, but on the other, the entries are quite personal, lacking elaboration of both the circumstances Marcus references and the identities of the figures he discusses, some of whom are known to history (e.g. his grandfather, Marcus Annius Verus; Alexander the grammarian; the orator and rhetorician Fronto) alongside others more obscure (e.g. an unnamed tutor as well as named figures whose identities are unknown). Thus, while the book’s structure does suggest it was composed with forethought, during a time of leisure and with an eye toward a whole, it seems likely that Marcus composed it for his own benefit, as a philosophical exercise.

The opening book introduces two of Marcus's key themes. His extended discussion of virtues not only excludes material comforts and pleasures but repeatedly champions the opposite of them: living simply and shunning indulgences. Additional virtues he highlights include avoiding gossip, practicing kindness, and performing virtuous acts because they are correct and not because they are praised. This introduces the theme of The Irrelevance of Materialism and Status to a Virtuous Life. A second theme introduced in Book 1 is The Relationship Between Fate, Free Will, and Divine Intervention. From his mother, Marcus learned piety, and from Apollonius, a Stoic philosopher engaged by Antoninus Pius to teach Marcus, he learned “moral freedom,” meaning the ability to give no attention to “the dice of fortune” and focus instead on reason, unaffected by circumstances. Though the theme of fate, free will, and divine intervention is developed more fully later, the seeds of his explorations begin in the virtues he learned from his family, teachers, and friends.